brian david johnson

Chapter 2

DO DIGITAL HOMESDREAM OF ELECTRIC FAMILIES?CONSUMER EXPERIENCEARCHITECTURE AS AFRAMEWORK FOR DESIGN

Brian David JohnsonThe Intel [email protected]

Abstract If we are designing for digital homes then we are not designing for humans?How do we truly design for real people? Consumer experience architecture(CEA) provides an actionable framework for the development, design, and pro-duction of products and services specifically centered around human needs, de-sires and frames of understanding. This chapter dismantles CEA into its essentialcomponents, exploring real-world examples and illustrations. Finally the chap-ter challenges the reader to expand current development practices by lookingtoward science fiction or other cultural inputs as possible laboratories or inspira-tions for future designs.

Keywords: Product innovation; Holistic design framework; Human–computer interaction;Ethnography in design; Designing for humans; Science fiction as laboratory.

1. Introduction

The title of this chapter takes its inspiration from the title of Philip K Dick’s1968 science fiction masterpiece “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” Thenovel tells of the moral conflict of Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter who tracksdown androids in a devastated futuristic San Francisco. The novel was popu-larized in the early 1980s when Ridley Scott directed the film Blade Runner,

W. Minker et al. (eds.), Advanced Intelligent Environments, 27DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-76485-6 2, c© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009

28 Advanced Intelligent Environments

based loosely on Dick’s story. One of the most enduring themes of the book iswhat it means to be human and conversely what it means not to be.

I wanted to make reference to Dick’s novel because I am interested in whatit means to design for humans. How do you develop and design future tech-nologies for people? What makes these new products valuable? What makesthem usable and meaningful? Similarly, what happens when you design with-out humans in mind? What happens when products are designed without anunderstanding of the people who are going to use them? When we design dig-ital home products are we designing them for electric families instead of realpeople? Does anyone really want a digital home or do they just want theirexisting homes to be just a little bit better? In this chapter I explore consumerexperience architecture as a practice and a methodology for developing prod-ucts and services so that they fit intuitively into the lives of consumers. Here,I draw on recent experiences at Intel Corporation, where we have applied thisframework directly to the development of personal technology devices.

Consumer experience architecture (CEA) provides a framework for multi-ple inputs into the design and development process, including ethnographic re-search, market analysis, demographic profiles, competitive analysis along withtechnological innovation and exploration. CEA provides a holistic frameworkthat can be used by technology and social science researchers, product plan-ners, hardware and software engineers as well as project managers to unitetheir varied domains into a process that holds the human value of the productas the guiding principle throughout that product’s development.

Additionally, CEA provides the ability to identify, specify, document, andvalidate the human value of the product as the desired consumer experience.By documenting this experience, founded on both the human insights and tech-nological innovation, it can then be systematically validated at key milestonesin the development process. This rigorous documentation and validation ofthe consumer experience means that we can develop products that can be bothfuturistic and fit effortlessly into people’s daily lives.

Finally, once we have implemented CEA’s holistic approach to technologydevelopment, we are free to ask ourselves what other influences could be uti-lized in the design of new products. An interesting and entertaining challengewould be to take the work of Philip K. Dick and other science fiction writers,using their visions of the future as another input into the CEA process. Therehas always been a close tie between science fiction and science fact. Could theCEA framework create wildly futuristic devices that would still have meaningand value for consumers?

Do Digital Homes Dream of Electric Families? 29

2. User Experience Group Overview:Understanding People to Build BetterTechnology

In 2005, Intel underwent a significant restructuring which included the es-tablishment of several new business groups focused explicitly around usage ofecosystems and activities – the home, the office, emerging markets, and mo-bile users. As part of the restructuring, senior executives also endorsed theinclusion of user research teams and competencies. In the newly establishedDigital Home Business Group, an explicit commitment to consumer-centricthinking has been an important part of business from day 1. The User Expe-rience Group, of which I am a member, is an interdisciplinary team dedicatedto bringing the perspectives of ordinary people into Intel’s product planning,development, and marketing activities. For the last 2 years, I have been a con-sumer experience architect within this group.

Our group includes two distinct competencies: one with quantitative andqualitative research focus and the other oriented more closely to usability,usage modeling, and user experience assessment. Our research competency,which consists of social science and design researchers, spends time in peo-ple’s homes all over the world. We take as a starting point the firm convictionthat people’s social and cultural practices change far more slowly than tech-nologies. This team is focused on getting a sense of what makes people tick,what they care about, what they aspire to, and what frustrates them. This re-search is focused around getting a sense of the larger cultural patterns andpractices that shape people’s relationships to and uses of new technologies.

In 2006, we conducted more than 400 field interviews in 16 countries, andthe team is on track for similar metrics in 2007. To accomplish this researchwe use long-standing qualitative and interpretive studies such as participantobservation, interviews, as well as shadowing people’s daily lives. Typicallythese are on small scale, conducted in person by the team, and are based ona traditional approach of ethnographic field research (Salvador et al., 1999).Along with this we will also use more experimental design research methodssuch as cultural probes, photo diaries, cognitive mapping, and story tellingexercises (Gaver et al., 1999). These contemporary methods are a means toinvolve the participants in a more collaborative way during the research. Oftenwe send design research activities to the participants before the research teamarrives. This prompts the participant to begin documenting their lives rightaway and provides us a rich starting place to begin the ethnographic research.


3. Guiding Principles for Global Researchand Product Investigation

Our research activities are guided by three principles: privileging people,practices, and presence. First we focus on people not users. It can be an unfor-tunate trap for many product development teams to conceptualize the peoplewho will be buying and/or using their product as simply a user of that specificproduct. They do not envision or comprehend the wider life and influence ontheir customer. This conceptualization does not see them or treat them like ahuman; much like this chapter’s title it treats the user more like a digital familythan a flesh and blood user. The result of these digital fantasies can be quiteshocking and are rendered most visible when the person who is looking tobuy or use the product does not know how to use it. On some occasions, theconsumer may never understand the value of the product and simply ignore it.

Our second guiding principle concerns social and cultural practices: we areinterested in people’s everyday lives. We look for domesticated technologiesas opposed to imagined technologies. Much like design teams conceptualizepeople as simply users or non-humans, these same computer science or de-velopment teams can imagine their technologies as theoretical or engineeringprototypes. What is lost in this approach is that all technologies exist in thereal world once they have left the lab. And we all know the real world is avery different place than the lab. Because of this, when we explore how peo-ple all over the world are using technology, we make sure to look at how thattechnology is actually used. What do people do with this technology in theirlives? What works for them? What does not work? How and why does thetechnology break down? Who spends time using the device or service? In thisway we begin to form a grounded and realistic vision of how technologies areused by people everyday.

Our third and final guiding principle is that we always make sure to keep inmind that most of people’s lives are spent off-screen, meaning that most peo-ple’s lives are spent not sitting in front of a screen or even using technology.In fact this off-screen time is the time that most people cherish most. To un-derstand this life off-screen and understand why it fuels people, we explore themeaning people get from every aspect of their lives.

4. Houses are Hairy: The Need for ExperienceDesign

“Experience Design has become newly recognized and named. However,it is really a combination of many previous disciplines; but never before havethese disciplines been so interrelated, nor have the possibilities for integratingthem into whole solutions been so great” (Shedroff, 2001).


A few years ago I was building a personal computer with a friend of mine.He is a software engineer for a near-by science museum. We were talkingabout where to put the computer once it was built. My question was, “ShouldI put it on the floor of the study or on a table?” He said it really did not matter.“But there’s so much more dust and dirt on the floor. It has to matter,” I replied.“Brian, you have no idea how much dust and hair there is in your house... Ineveryone’s house,” he replied. “If a hardware engineer ever opened up mycomputer or any appliance in my house they would be shocked and horrifiedwith what they found. Our houses aren’t clean rooms. What can you do?Houses are hairy; it doesn’t matter where you put it.”

My friend made a good point; houses are “hairy” and many products, es-pecially technology products like computers, are not always designed for thecluttered lives of humans (Figure 1). But this example goes far beyond thephysical. It can be argued that the physical designs of products are actually farmore suited to consumers than their wider needs for purchase, set up, main-tenance, and ongoing use. Not only houses are hairy but humans lives arealso busy and wonderfully cluttered with a vast array of influences that affecthow they understand and use technology. In short, the entire consumer expe-rience of many products appears not to be designed with the real life of theirconsumers in mind.

Figure 1. The PC goes home.


“Whereas architecture and furniture design have successfully operated inthe realm of cultural speculation for some time, product design’s strong tiesto the marketplace have left little room for speculation on the cultural func-tion of electronic products. As ever more of our everyday social and culturalexperiences are mediated by electronic products, designers need to developways of exploring how this electronic mediation might enrich people’s every-day lives” (Dunne, 2006)

Consumer experience architecture, as it can be applied as a framework forthe research, design, development, and marketing of technology, is a powerfultool. It allows companies like Intel to hardwire the real lives and desires of hu-mans into a process it too often oriented more toward an engineering culture.With the increasing complexity of digital home products and services, under-standing and architecting consumer experiences is becoming more importantand essential for success.

5. Consumer Experience Architecturein Industry

“Consumer experience will drive the adoption of home media technology,not a particular piece of equipment” (Kim, 2007).

At Intel and across the high-technology development industry, CEA, ormore specifically the desired result of consumers’ acceptance of new devicesand services is gaining exposure and relevance. This increased exposure andacceptance has everything to do with financial success. A recent Parks andAssociates Digital Home Services Report (2007) found that as many as 40%of people purchasing wireless networking equipment to connect computers andother devices in their homes return them to the store for a refund. The alarmingpart of this statistic is that of the 40% that were returned, 90% of these deviceshad no known defect when the returned merchandise was checked. From thisinformation one can extrapolate that people were returning the devices becausethey did not understand them, did not value them, or simply could not makethem work. This is just one example of many. The rising complexity of de-vices in the market means that this problem will only continue unless there isa significant cultural shift in the way that devices and products are developedfor the general public.

Companies are seeing that even if their devices are innovative and pricedright consumers may still not buy them if they do not understand how to setthem up and use them. Worse yet, people will return products if their experi-ence with the product does not match what they thought they were buying orwhat the manufacturer had promised.


6. Technology for Humans: A DesignFramework

CEA provides a framework that we can use to insert the consumer’s perspec-tive at key points in the product development process. At Intel, the cycles ofplanning and development (prototype to alpha and beta and release candidates)are intersected at key points to ensure that the original goals of the product andthe value of the product to the general public are always met (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. Overview of development process.

This development process can be broken up into four discrete and distinctstages. Each stage serves as a key point of intersection, influence, and iterationin the development process.

6.1 Stage 1: Human Insight

I was once asked, if by using the CEA process, could I have predictedthe important and massive public acceptance of e-mail. I replied, that yes, I


probably could have recognized the significance of e-mail as a technology inwhich people would be wildly interested. The reasoning was simple: for hun-dreds of years people in a range of different social, cultural, and economiccircumstances had been composing, writing, and sending letters to one an-other, and of course, for thousands of years before that, oral messages con-veyed thoughts, emotions, and information over distances, small and great. Itis at the foundation of how we communicate with our friends and family. E-mail was simply a new means of distribution for a very old and cherished formof social interaction – communication.

The initial research and information gathering stage of the CEA frameworkprovides input into the planning cycle. Here the team’s ethnographic insightsare coupled with market strategy, competitive product analysis as well as tech-nical innovations. It is important to note that for many new products there maybe little to no existing competitive or market information. In this case, ethno-graphic and other forms of qualitative consumer-centric information becomeeven more valuable, as it provides a foundation of human values and behavioraround the new product. Even if the product is new, the human behavior thatwill take advantage of the product remains the same.

Out of this early research and persona development, key deliverables are anactionable summary of the research. Typically this includes a top line report orexecutive summary with appropriate detail and field findings. It is important atthis stage that the recommendations or areas for development serve as a guidein early design cycles.

A second deliverable from this cycle is a set of personas or archetypes thatdescribe the people for whom the product is being designed (the “Who” inFigure 2). Utilizing personas in the design and development of products isnot a new practice (Cooper, 2004). Traditionally personas utilize market anddemographic information to create a personality or lifestyle. A way to expandthis sometimes-limited approach can be the addition of real-world data andinsights. Archetypes, as they are sometimes called, can consist of a collectionof ethnographic family and participant profiles that outline actual people thathave been observed and studied. The collection of these profiles combined withdemographic and market information can provide a more in-depth portrait ofthe target consumers with a depth that is grounded in actual human interactions.

6.2 Stage 2: Experience Definition

“New cognitive models can often revolutionize an audience’s understandingof data, information, or an experience by helping them understand and reorga-nize things they previously understood (or, perhaps, couldn’t understand), in away that illuminates the topic or experience” (Shedroff, 2001).


As the planning cycle moves forward and the product becomes more de-fined, a set of documents are created that outline the specific consumer expe-rience that the product or service is trying to bring to market. A benefit ofthis stage is that it provides the opportunity for every member of the develop-ment team to gain a holistic understanding of the desired consumer experience.From the technical developers to marketing team, this knowledge proves to beinvaluable as the development cycles move forward. It provides both a baseof knowledge from which each team member could draw upon to inform theirspecific domains in the design process. This knowledge becomes a shared un-derstanding between all team members. It gives them a common language andenhances collaboration. Additionally, it gives them a shared goal that has beendocumented and can be retuned to for wider problem-solving activities of evenbroader corporate or business group alignment. This experience definition canhelp bridge the process gaps that occur between engineering and marketing orhardware and software teams or even project teams and management.

The experience specification builds upon the early research and persona de-velopment and identifies experience opportunities or specific human valuesthat the product can enhance. As stated previously, consumer experience is thesum total of multiple inputs or influences on the consumer understanding of aproduct. All of these inputs serve to form a mental model for the consumer. Itis this mental model that we can use to construct and develop a solid experiencethat will be both usable and desirable.

Each of these influences can be mapped and explored in an in-depth re-view of the product’s life cycle. This process begins with the consumers’ firstawareness of the product, typically through advertising or marketing. This canalso occur through the consumers’ social network of friends and family. Fromthis point the product life cycle documents the consumer’s behaviors as theygather more information, research the product, and ultimately use or touch theproduct for the first time. This first experience can occur in a retail setting oreven online. The life cycle then outlines the purchase environment either ina retail store or online and then the physical out of box experience. This stepin the process should be specific, recording whether the appropriate documen-tation and cables are included, whether the printed package design continuesto deliver on the product’s marketing and brand promise, even if the packingmaterials are easily recycled. Finally we follow the product through its ini-tial instillation and set-up, ultimately exploring the complexity of the productsdaily use by multiple consumers in the household.

This exhaustive documentation and visualization affords the developmentteam a framework to envision the product and comprehend the overarchingconsumer experience at its earliest stage of development. It uncovers details inevery step of a complex process that are typically overlooked.


The consumer experience specification becomes a core document in theproduct’s development library, consulted by new team members, reviewed bythe team in problem-solving brainstorms, and also as a foundation for the thirdstage in the framework.

6.3 Stage 3: Early Product Definition

Once the experience opportunities have been identified and the consumer’sexperience mapped, it is necessary to deconstruct these opportunities into us-age models and values propositions. Usage models are an industry-acceptedstandard format for the development of technology specifications and proto-types. Usage models contain the detail necessary to translate usage informa-tion to a set of user requirements to guide planners, architects, and engineersin generating hardware and software requirements. Usage models include thefollowing:

Usage summaries: A descriptive summary of the usage (e.g., text, story-boards, concept drawings)

Use cases: A collection of related interactions between users and sys-tem (e.g., streaming video content from home PC to mobile phone, co-editing video simultaneously from two PCs in different locations)

Usage scenarios: Stories or explorations that illustrate how people or thearchetypes in a specific context actually use the system to accomplishtheir goals

Task flows: A visual representation of the step-by-step course of eventsrequired for the usage to occur in a positive way

Operational profiles: The operations a person can perform with the sys-tem along with how frequently each will be performed relative to theothers

From the experience opportunities and usage models we then develop theproduct’s value propositions. These value propositions act as an expressionof the product to the consumer, using their own language. Documentingthese value propositions in consumer-specific language is an essential partof the framework. Many times in the development of products the develop-ment team can use their own corporate or engineering-based terms and vo-cabulary to describe this value. The team uses this language to describe tothemselves and their management the benefit of the product to the consumer.This practice opens up a gap between the development team and the peoplewho will ultimately use the product. Not surprising the average person would


not understand the corporate and engineering terms used in most developmentcompanies. Using this language further separates the production team from thepeople they are designing for.

Clearly development teams need their engineer cultures to operate as a busi-ness but at the same time it is important that they also take a moment and speakthe product’s value propositions in the language of the personas or archetypesthat were defined in the first stage of the process.

This step in the framework serves as a point of reflection and iteration. Itallows the team to make minor adjustments to their products personas andminor course corrections in the experience that is being developed. In thisway the team can track their progress. Also this articulation can serve as away to discuss the attributes and value of the product to people both inside andoutside the development team. It becomes a kind of shorthand or elevator pitchthat can be used to explain the product to management, outside companies, orinvestors.

Along with this reflection and iteration the product’s experience opportuni-ties and value propositions are formalized into usage models. The usage mod-els provide the in-depth detail needed for engineering to develop the product tothe point of execution. The details of a full usage model definition should en-compass the full specifications of the product. Again the framework providesthe team a means to visualize the product down to the smallest detail beforethey begin building. Here issues of technical feasibility can arise and possi-ble adjustments to the product will need to be made. Likewise, marketing andbusiness teams’ involvement can uncover underlying customer feasibility.

6.4 Stage 4: Production and Validation

The final step in the consumer experience framework is the longest in dura-tion and the most complex in execution. During the product development andvalidation cycle the team applies a user experience (UX) validation process orUX process throughout the entire production of the product. The UX processencompasses a variety of systematic methods employed to evaluate and under-stand people’s perceptions and experiences with the product. UX’s targetedmethods examine the user experience with concepts, prototypes, functionalproduct, and competitor products. UX is not market research or focus grouptesting, but rather assessment of people’s actual interactions with a prototypeor product of some sort.

At each key milestone in the development process (e.g., prototypes, alpha,beta, and release candidates) the team uses UX to validate that the originalconsumer experience goals are being met by the product. The test protocols forthe UX validation are based on the core documents of the consumer experienceframework. The archetypes and personas establish the audience for the UX


test. The experience specification describes the test environments and how theproduct should present itself to the consumer. Finally the value propositionscan be tested to see if they do indeed have value to the consumer and if theproduct is meeting the promise of these propositions.

The UX validation process provides iterative feedback directly from theconsumer as to the successes and failures of the product. By performing thisvalidation process multiple times throughout development and basing all stageson a consistent framework UX allows the development team to refine the prod-uct multiple times to meet the original experience opportunities outlined forthe product.

The results of the UX validation process are not only valuable to the devel-opment team. The iterative results of this process coupled with the experiencedocuments from previous stages of the framework provide a clear and com-pelling picture of the product even before it has been shipped. The results ofthe UX validation can provide clarity to upper management, possible partnersas well as the investment community.

7. Conclusion: How I Learned to Stop WorryingAbout the Future and Love Science Fiction:A Challenge

The CEA framework, as outlined in these four stages, provides a systematicapproach to ensure that products are both grounded in human values and thatthese values are delivered on throughout the development process. From initialresearch to the final validation, the CEA framework lays a solid foundationupon which all team members can base their specific innovations, assured thattheir efforts will resonate with the intended audience.

Now that we have established an actionable framework for the applicationof human-centered values and experience to the product development process,it allows us to examine other inputs we might use in this process.

An interesting challenge would be to examine how we could utilize the un-deniable power of futuristic visions exemplified in the inspirational visions ofscience fiction to act as another meaningful input into the CEA process. Tra-ditionally science fiction would be categorized as a specific cultural influencethat acts upon the consumer. But I would argue that science fiction occupiesa unique position in the influence of consumers’ view of technology. It givespeople not only a vision of what these future innovations might be but it alsouses story and character to give these innovations a wider context so that theycan be better understood and valued.

“It is my contention that some of the most remarkable features of the presenthistorical moment have their roots in a way of thinking that we have learnedfrom science fiction” (Disch, 2000).


Inventors and developers have always been influenced by science fiction.Video phones imagined in fictions like 2001 A Space Odyssey are availablefor purchase right off store shelves. What is the latest mobile phone but arealization of the Star Trek communicator? The CEA framework now providesan overt way to incorporate these inventions of science fiction and turn theminto science fact.

Acknowledgments This chapter could not have been written without thesupport of Genevieve Bell and the Intel Corporation. The works of MichaelPayne and Cory Booth were an essential component in the CEA framework.

References

Cooper, A. (2004). The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High TechProducts Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity. Sams-PearsonEducation.

Disch, T. M. (2000). The Dreams Our Stuff is Made of: How Science FictionConquered the World. Free Press.

Dunne, A. (2006). Hertzian Tales. The MIT Press.Gaver, W., Dunne, T., and Pacenti, E. (1999). Cultural Probes. Interactions,

6(1):21–29.Kim, E. (2007). As Quoted in Digital Home: It’s the Experience Not the

Device. Schwankett, Steven, PC World.Salvador, T., Bell, G., and Anderson, K. (1999). Design Ethnography. Design

Management Journal, 10(4):9–12.Shedroff, N. (2001). Experience Design. Waite Group Press.

http://www.springer.com/978-0-387-76484-9

brian david johnson

Documents

design designing

humans science fiction

design future technologies

lookingtoward science

development process

social science researchers

actionable framework

current development